Work Text:
Neil locks the door to his small house and runs into the late summer afternoon. He’s late and he fucking hopes nobody will give him shit about it.
The club is starting in 10 minutes, he can get there in 8 if he sprints down the hill.
So he does so. And of course, he stumbles over stone and falls flat on his face and hands. He is fuming with anger now. First, his online therapy meeting was unintentionally longer than normally. He and his therapist worked on some not so heavy but still important and tangled stuff that Neil wants to be finally done with, so he lost track of time because of that and than he had just few minutes before he had to get out of the house and head for the club.
Now, freaking stone. What else? Will he get a call that his cat died in the cat hotel he put her into for today, because he is busy and wanted her to have a nice vacation without him?
He runs the rest of the hill with bloody hands and he is a minute away from the library the club meets at, when he feels his phone vibrate.
He takes the phone in the hand, which is little difficult to do so because it is slippery in his hands, because of the blood.
Cat hotel thing the phone informs him is calling.
“Fucking fuck, jesus,” he breathes out, before he picks it up. “Hello?”
“Hi, is it Neil Josten?”
“Yeah?” Neil makes a turn and he stops running, because the library is just few meters in front of him and he has 2 minutes to spare. He also doesn’t want to be inside the library if his cat really died in the cat hotel.
“Great. I am Renee, from the Cleopatra Hotel for cats. We wanted to inform you that unfortunately, your cat got into fight with our other resident.”
Neil swallowed and closed his eyes tightly (which is not a smart thing to do if you already fell once today when you ran and you are still, in fact, fast-walking, but whatever), readying himself for the hard news.
“Is she…” He doesn’t have the guts to ask. Jesus, I am getting so soft…
“She’s alright,” Renee says and Neil almost cries out in relief. “However, she has a few scratches here and there that bled a little. I am really, really sorry for this, it doesn’t happen in our facility on daily or even monthly basis. We are trully, deeply sorry and we would like to offer you…” and then she goes on and on about apologising and offering Neil special services for his cat. He need to end this call quickly, so he jumps into her monologue, accepts the offers and thanks for the apology, makes once again sure his Sir is really okay (he also asks for a photo to be sent immediately) and ends the call instantly.
It’s 6:01 and the club started minute ago. Shit.
He goes inside the library and since it is really small local library, he sees and hears his club mates even from the door.
“Brianne, you did an amazing job with the hem, gosh! Look at the colouring of that thing! Stunning!” Patricia Baker is just melting over the sweater Brianne finished over the week since their last club meeting.
“Neil sended me a video how to do it. I played it on the phone over and over. It is very handy thing, that smart phone application,” Brianne says.
Neil grins as he walks over to his crew. Yeah, he is a head coach of a local knitting and crocheting team. He loves it and he adores the girls.
Together, this lot is over 300 years old. Half of them are over 70, other half just little over 80. And Neil likes all of them dearly.
“Hello, ladies,” he says, his voice louder so everybody in the part of the library where club meetings are held, notices him. The library is closed for public after 6pm, so they won’t be bothered by other people than the club. “I am really sorry for coming late.”
The ladies greets him with “hello”s and concerned “what happened”s but he waves them off and continues “I’ll go clean myself up, I’ll be right back in a bit, alright? Meanwhile you can prepare for todays lesson in knitting the northern pattern on a sweather.”
When he washes the blood and some gravel out of his hands, he quickly makes his way back to the ladies. They are all sitting in their armchairs that the stuff of the library always helps them to pull into a circle, elbows supported by the armrests, knitting and crocheting kits out. They are currently voting on what music to put on, when Neil arrives. The chances for Elvis are high, but Neil secretly hopes that Bowie will win the vote this time.
He opens his mouth to speak and start the club, but he is interrupted by the main library door opening. All of them look in the direction of the door to see, who it is, because all of the members of the cub are already seated so nobody is missing. And new member hasn’t joined the club for almost a year now. Brokeville is a small town.
Neil squints at the person by the door.
Shit, he really should see an optician, as Patricia urges him to. He can’t se shit when he’s so far away from the door.
The person, or for now, the black short blob in Neil’s vision, is still standing awkwardly by the door, not coming over.
“If you are here for books, return tomorrow, the library is opened from 10am to 3pm on weekends,” Neil informs him. Sometimes people try to use the library after hours when they see that club has the meeting here.
The words make the blob come closer, closer, until it is standing right in front of Neil, only few steps away.
“I am here for the club,” the short blonde guy says.
“Ah, than you’re welcome.”
“I emailed you this morning,” the guy adds and Neil feels the lightbulb turn on in his head.
“Right! Andrew Minyard, was it?” Neil completely forgot about him until now.
The guy nods.
“Excellent. Please, have a seat,” Neil says and than frowns a little, when he sees Andrew flinch a little at his words.
“Um, do you have your hook and yarn I wrote you about?”
Andrew Minyard nods again.
Neil smiles. “Great, then you’re ready. As I also mentioned in the email, the club is now working on the patterns that are little advanced. So, I’ll tell the girls what to do first and then I’ll help you after, alright?”
Andrew’s cheeks are little pink now and Neil doesn’t know if it is from the heat outside or because he calls mostly retired ladies ‘the girls’.
“Alright,” Andrew mumbles and goes find himself another armchair.
Brianne is just putting on the music they voted on and then Neil teaches his ladies how to do next few rows in the northern pattern sweather.
After 15 minutes, he finally comes to the new member of the club.
“Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Neil Josten.”
“Yeah, I know. From the mail,” Andrew almost rolls his eyes.
“Right, right. Well, let’s get started. You wrote me that you’d like to learn how to do dolls. So, firstly you need to learn how to crochet certain stitches and show you muscles, how to work with hook and your fingers.”
Next 10 minutes he shows Andrew hat to do and how to make a simple crocheted coaster, since it is a good thing to start learning on. Than, for the rest of their club hour, he walks around and chats with the ladies and he even exchanged few words with Andrew. His words are little sharp but in the hones way, not the harsh way. Neil likes it a lot, likes that Andrew can catch on and appreciate when Neil makes some witty joke.
He likes chatting with the girls.
The dog Brianne had bad poops last week, but Neil is glad to hear that he is doing okay now. “I bet Richard gave him the salami he promised mi to stop buying last year. Bastard,” Brianne says with no real heat in her voice.
Other ladies agree.
Patricia’s granddaughter finally finished college and is now doing an internship in some French firm.
“Give me a call if she needs help with French or anything, alright? I might be able to help,” Neil offers when he hears the news and Patricia smiles at him gratefully.
“That’d be wonderful, thank you, Neil.”
He finds out that Andrew moved into Brokeville last week because his brother lives here with his wife.
“Oh, you’re the Minyard’s brother!” Neil realises.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Andrew deadpans. “You know him?” He asks, not showing any emotion, just slowly crocheting his row.
Neil shakes his head. “Nah, I just know his name. Aaron, was it? The local paediatrician? He’s a doctor of the kids my friends have. They told me he has no eyebrows.”
Andrew huffs. “Curse of all blond people. No eyebrows.”
“You have whole two eyebrows, Andrew,” Neil congratulates him. Then he feels little bold, when Andrew smirks and he says: “They suit you.”
There. Blush again.
---
Andrew furrows his brow, but it is just because he is about to turn his work to start another row, which he finds very hard, Neil notices. When Andrew fails to crochet into the right first stitch in the row, Neil tells him so and than Andrew is showing his work into Neil’s hands. “Do the first one,” he mumbles, and his cheeks are pink once again.
Neil laughs then, but does as he is told to.
---
When the hour is over, he is updated on the life of the ladies and knows few things about Andrew Minyard.
“Wow, well done, Minyard. Nice,” Neil praises the coaster Andrew finished. He also cannot help but grin his biggest grin at Andrew, just to see the pink on the cheeks again.
“Fuck off.”
“Language!” Ophelia scolds him jokingly, while she is packing her tools and half finished sweather.
Andrew looks at her and very intentionally rolls his eyes. Ophelia laughs and Neil with her.
He says goodbye to the ladies and stays behind to help get all of the armchairs back into places they were supposed to be. Andrew Minyard also stays.
“So, why dolls?” Neil asks, because he is really curious.
Andrew is silent for few seconds, just moving one armchair (and Neil very pointedly tries not to look at the biceps that bulge under the heavy weight of the armchair). “My nephew and niece.”
“Nice,” Neil grins, because family is really good reason why start crocheting.
“Why did you start with it?” Andrew asks when they’re finished and standing in front of the library, while Neil locks the door. The blonde obviously doesn’t rush home and wants to Neil a little more.
The redhead than straightens up, looks at the clear sky full of stars and breathes in the night breeze.
“Would you like to see the best Brokeville’s beach? I can tell you on the way.”